Our Team
The Futures Strategy Group’s people have a wide variety of backgrounds, skill sets and training, and two decades’ experience combining them for creative outcomes for our clients. We bring deep analytical rigor and business acumen, broad political, financial, marketing and strategy expertise, and an organizational culture of innovation to bear on our clients’ most pressing issues.
Peter Kennedy, Managing Principal
Peter Kennedy began as Latin American analyst for Business International (later absorbed into the Economist Group), where he worked in the same office as a young man named Barack Obama. Peter has consulted for many multinational clients, from global insurance companies to auto manufacturers to the Panama Canal Authority. His academic training is in Economics, Public Policy, and Global Affairs.
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Gerard Smith, Managing Principal
Gerard Smith is a Managing Principal of the Futures Strategy Group, following more than 30 years as a brand and marketing strategist with experience in advertising, branding and global marketing. He has an extensive background in creating solutions to strategic marketing challenges for many of the world’s best known companies.
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Joseph Dufresne, Principal
Joe Dufresne is an FSG Principal — and former FSG client with the US Coast Guard. A recently retired USCG Captain, Joe specializes in strategic foresight, with broad corporate application, including budgeting, operations, human capital and acquisitions.
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Mark Trexler, Associate Consultant
Mark C. Trexler is an FSG Associate, specializing in climate change scenario planning. Mark has advised companies on climate strategies and risk management for more than 20 years, and launched the first business climate risk consultancy in the U.S. in 1991.
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Jonathan Jeter, Associate Consultant
Jonathan Jeter is an FSG associate with a considerable background in innovation and training. As an independent strategy, innovation and culture consultant, Jonathan works with organizations to unlock their potential through more inspired insights, ideas, and people.
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Patrick Marren, Principal
Patrick Marren has two decades' experience consulting to dozens of world-leading organizations on futures issues and strategy. He has a regular column in the Journal of Business Strategy, in which he writes, perhaps unsurprisingly, on business and strategy. He has a Master's degree in Business Administration from the University of Chicago with a specialization in finance.
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Cathy Johnson, Associate Consultant
Cathy Johnson is a freelance researcher and editor who provides research, administrative, and production support to the Futures Strategy Group. Cathy has worked with the founding principals of FSG since the mid-1980s, when they were at The Futures Group, Inc., and later at Deloitte and FSG.
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Kevin McDermott, Principal
Kevin’s collaborations with FSG date back to 2006 and the groundbreaking Project Horizon for the U.S. Department of State. Since then, Kevin has played invaluable roles in FSG project work and scenario practice development for clients including Port Authority of New York & New Jersey and the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education.
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Charles W. Thomas, Senior Advisor
Charles W. (Tom) Thomas has been involved in scenario planning since shortly after his days as a Soviet Studies and International Relations graduate student and teacher. He has worked in both public and private sectors, is responsible for many of the groundbreaking features of the FSG approach to scenario planning, and he combines in-depth knowledge, creativity, and communications skills.
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Charles Perrottet, Principal
Charles Perrottet has decades of experience in mergers and acquisitions, finance, and advising senior management in industries as diverse as toys, banking, airlines, and snow-blowers (in fact, he thought up the famous Toro "Sno-Risk" program). He has graduate degrees from both the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business and the London School of Economics.
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Robert Avila, Associate Consultant
Robert Avila is an economist working with the Futures Strategy Group on scenario planning for corporate and government clients. Robert has advised companies on strategy and market environment issues for well over twenty years.
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Patrick Kelly, Associate Consultant
Patrick Kelly is an FSG Associate, specializing in strategy and decision support in Financial Services. Prior to joining us, he was a Partner in Deloitte Consulting’s Strategy & Operation’s practice. He was deeply involved in building Deloitte’s Financial Services practice in China and Hong Kong.
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Jack Clarke, Associate Consultant
Dr. John L. Clarke (Jack) is an Associate of the Futures Strategy Group and a contributor to FSG strategy and security engagements. He is also Professor of Defense Management and Strategic Studies and Director of the Program on Civil Security at the Marshall Center in Garmisch, Germany.
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